Crime in Wartime: A Social History of Crime in World War II by Edward Smithies
Allen and Unwin, 219 pp, £12.50, January 1982, ISBN 0 04 364020 6

The first of these books, Rough Justice, is 350 pages of documentary journalism on the rise and fall of the notorious Richardson gang, which operated a reign of terror, extortion and fraud in parts of London from the late 1950s to the famous torture trial of 1967. These operations were restored to topicality after Charles Richardson’s escape from prison in May 1980 and his subsequent letter to the Times. The first question which needs to be asked is whether such books should be written at all. And if they are written, should any serious notice be taken of them? The existence of violent, sadistic and resourceful criminals is an unhappy fact of life, and even if the author goes to considerable pains to underline their culpability and to scorn their protestations of innocence, which Mr Parker certainly does, there is no doubt that this type of highly personalised saga (it is ‘Charlie’ and ‘Eddy’ throughout) invites a substantial degree of sympathy with the villains and dignifies their lives with attention they ill deserve. These, however, are difficult questions to answer in relation to the present book. It is meticulously researched and compellingly written, for all its affectedly brawny style. But does it contribute anything other than a chronology of cheerless greed and foul deeds set against a background of scrap dealers and flashy night-clubs? The answer, delivered with considerable reluctance, is yes, this is a useful book for criminologists and laymen alike.

This judgment owes little to the characters of the brothers themselves or of their brutal and inadequate cronies. Still less are there any rewarding conclusions to be drawn from their drab and delinquent backgrounds. What is interesting, as so often, are the men and systems which connive at or allow the spectacular growth of criminal enterprises, and the inflated and grandiose incompetence which finally destroys them. It is a melancholy fact, well documented in the book, that neither the Richardson gang nor the Krays could conceivably have done their business without the knowledge and connivance of the Police at a very high level. What caused their downfall, also well documented, was a belief that their power had reached such heights that, in London, mass armed warfare in public was within the bounds of their immunity, and that, in South Africa, vast mining ventures could be successfully pursued in partnership with a gang of patently second-rate con-men and drunken romantics. Of some interest, too, is the work that Charles Richardson carried out for BOSS in London: this included the burglaries of Amnesty, Zapu and Anti-Apartheid, and (possibly) the attempted bugging of No 10 Downing Street. The claim (in the blurb) that such revelations are ‘staggering’ is perhaps over-enthusiastic. Richardson, like most of his ilk, was naturally right-wing, and having been introduced to George Winter, ex-burglar, crime reporter and BOSS spy, and, more important, to Winter’s wife, Richardson was an obvious recruit for dirty tricks in London. He also plainly believed that his work for BOSS would provide him with favoured treatment from the South African Government for the pursuit of legitimate business. That belief showed a degree of political naivety not uncommon amongst successful gangsters. An inability to realise when they have reached the limits of tolerance, and of their own abilities, tends to destroy them. This is the important message of the book. Evil is rarely stopped by good men alone. It is more often stopped by grave defects of character and of self-awareness: no one else dares tell such criminals what they need to know.

Anyone in search of an object lesson in how to write about crime need look no further than Web of Corruption, which tells the story of John Poulson and T. Dan Smith. Raymond Fitzwalter and David Taylor took eight years to research and write their analysis of the most far-reaching corruption trial of this century. The opening summary is startling.

The full text of this book review is only available to subscribers of the London Review of Books.

Letters

SIR: In his review of my book Crime in Wartime (LRB, 15 July) Mr Marshall-Andrews argues that I have not proved that crime increased during World War Two, and for proof he demands ‘clear factual evidence’. The only facts that can perform this function are criminal statistics, and these do not, as he suggests, invariably ‘demonstrate increases in delinquency and plummeting standards of honesty’. Nor have I ‘used’ them to do so. The statistics for some crimes – juvenile delinquency, drunkenness – show decreases; rises elsewhere – in black-marketeering, prostitution etc – are explained by greater police activity rather than by real changes. A careful reading of my book will reveal that it was often this factor which lay behind wartime ‘increases’ in crime, and that the ‘weighty lamentations’ of the bench and the press were consequently directed at illusions. The principal exception was larceny – here the rise was genuine – and as larceny accounted for 90 per cent of crime during the war, the overall total also rose: by nearly 60 per cent between 1939 and 1945. For other varieties of crime – pilfering, white-collar crime – statistics were not assembled, and it is therefore necessary to try to interpret the evidence we do have, which is mainly court reports. I do not state that pilfering increased, because this cannot be proved: what may have increased was the willingness of employers to prosecute offenders. Nor do I use single statistics in vacuo lest I fall into the same error as your reviewer. Two thousand ration books stolen in Birmingham in 1947 would perhaps reveal ‘exemplary restraint’ on the part of the population if this figure was the total: in fact, it is the number stolen by burglars and housebreakers, ‘ingenious’ and ‘adaptable’ thieves who knew the sale value of coupons on the black market. Finally, the slight decline in indictable crime in London between 1939 and 1943 might ‘disprove the premise on which the book is based’ if the population had been stable: unfortunately for Mr Marshall-Andrews’s thesis, the civilian population of London fell by some two million during the war so that for every thousand Londoners remaining there were two more indictable crimes in 1943 than in 1939, four more in 1944 and eight more in 1945.